


'Cause I'm Awful Just To See

by onehoureternity



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AU, Angst, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2012-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-07 03:59:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/426697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onehoureternity/pseuds/onehoureternity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His soul is scraped bare like a hide, his faults stretched out clearly for him to see, and the worst part is, he can't do anything about it. Or maybe the worst part is that he can't bring himself to care. He's never quite sure anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Cause I'm Awful Just To See

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Americana ficathon](http://sister-wife.livejournal.com/15920.html?thread=293168#t293168), for the prompt:  
>  _A long time ago came a man on a track  
>  Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back  
> And he put down his load where he thought it was the best  
> He made a home in the wilderness_

Bruce Banner is, on the surface, so completely normal as to be almost boring. He's a high school biology teacher, he's got a wife named Betty, and their house actually has a goddamn white picket fence. To most people, Bruce Banner has a great life. Except for one thing. Bruce has a bit of an anger problem. (That's like saying Hurricane Katrina was just a little storm, but he's been lying to himself this long, why stop now?) He does yoga and breathing exercises to keep his heart rate down, takes out the majority of his aggression on punching bags and the guys down at the boxing gym. He does his best to keep a lid on it. And it mostly works. No one suspects a thing for the longest time. But he is, after all, only human.

The first time he gives himself completely over to his anger, someone dies.

He spends ten years in jail (manslaughter, self-defense, extreme emotional distress, he can't really remember what all his lawyers said), keeps his head down, becomes a model prisoner. No fights, no gangs, no trouble. He just wants to get out. He doesn't kid himself that Betty will still be waiting for him once he's out, she stopped visiting about two years in. He doesn't blame her, but that doesn't make it sting any less.

When he gets out, he's got a set of clothes, $50, and a cheap backpack. He's got a little money still stashed away in the bank, and he uses most of it to buy a car. He contemplates calling Tony and telling him he's out, but that would lead to Tony taking him out to dinner, filling him in all the things he'd missed, and probably attempting to get him drunk. And he loves Tony, Tony is his best friend, but right now, he just _really_ isn't up for that.

He leaves New York and starts driving west, leaving behind thet sprawling cities for fields of golden wheat and freeways, both of which go on forever. There's not a lot to do when you're driving through the Midwest, it's huge and sprawling, green shot through with gold, the dark ribbon of the highway weaving through it. He does a lot of thinking as he passes through Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska. His soul is scraped bare like a hide, his faults stretched out clearly for him to see, and the worst part is, he can't do anything about it. Or maybe the worst part is that he can't bring himself to care. He's never quite sure anymore. So he just keeps moving, wandering from town to town, a shade of a man haunting the back roads and interstates, going where he pleases, doing whatever will make him enough to buy some food for a few days, maybe a room in a cheap motel so he doesn't have to sleep in the car.

A year to the day after he gets out of prison, he calls Betty. He half-expects the number not to work anymore, but it rings three times before she picks up, and he barely gets out 'Hello' before the dial tone sounds in his ear again. And that's the death knell for his old life, he thinks, as if prison didn't go that job well enough. Just in case he needed reminding.

So he just...keeps driving, exploring all the nooks and crannies of America, the dark, shadowy, out of the way places, doing odd jobs and living rougher than he was used to, but he figured he deserved it. The further west he went, the less people looked at him with that edge of fear in their eyes, and he clung to that shred of normalcy like a lifeline.

Five years after he got out of prison, he's still a nomad, his hair long and liberally streaked with gray, a perpetual five o'clock shadow on his jaw. He's lean and tan from working outdoors. He doesn't even remotely resemble Bruce Banner anymore, and he's kind of relieved. He resigned himself a long time ago to living and (probably) dying on the road, somewhere in the backwoods of America. He's made peace with that. Really.

Or that's what he tells himself, anyway.


End file.
